Due to an accidental barn burning during a battle with the “Vengeful Scarecrow” at Old Man Frickert's farm the Scooby gang need summer jobs to pay for the damages, lucky for our heroes Daphne’s uncle Thornton "Thorny" Blake the 5th (Ted McGinley) has opened a new country club and offered them all positions there. The group’s dynamic takes a rather romantic shift in this adventure with Daphne (Kate Melton) and Fred (Robbie Amell) having becoming involved after their fracas with the Vengeful Scarecrow, which landed Daphne in Fred’s arms, and when finally arriving at the country club Shaggy (Nick Palatas) literally falls into the arms of Velma (Hayley Kiyoko), and though she remains rather blind to his infatuation he's madly in love with her.
“Summer loving had me a blast. Summer loving happened so fast!”
No sooner does the gang settle into their new jobs then the country club’s opening night party is crashed by a huge frog-like monster, a beast the gang had been warned about by the seemingly crazy woman (Marion Ross) at the local gas station. Apparently, she had told everyone that the country club should never have been built there as it would cause the “Lake Monster” to return. The gang quickly decides to talk to Mr. Uggins (Richard Moll) the operator of a creepy lighthouse, and the only person known to have ever taken a picture of the lake monster, which leads to an attack by said lake monster only for it be unmasked as Mr. Uggins himself. Turns out there isn’t a lot of money in lighthouse keeping and this was his best way of making a quick buck.
He should go back to being a bailiff at Night Court.
Though this particular lake monster turned out to be a fraud he wasn’t behind the attack at the country club and it is from Mr. Uggins that the gang learns the history and curse of the lake monster. It seems that when people first settled in Erie Point an old woman named Wanda Grubwort (Beverly Sanders) warned them not to come onto her land but they paid no attention to her and so she used her magic staff - which used blue moonstones as the source of her power - to turn a frog into a horrible monster that then attacked the villagers. This didn’t go over well with the settlers so Wanda was tried for witchcraft and burnt at the stake. Now, the witch has somehow returned to rebuild her magic staff and is using the lake monster to find the moonstones that powered it.
Who is actually behind the lake monster?
There really isn’t much of a mystery behind Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster and though the gang do run around looking for clues, with Daphne surprisingly being the best at this aspect of the mystery-solving, but much of the film’s runtime is spent on the romantic entanglements amongst the Scooby gang. We have Fred’s belief that he and Daphne are just having some “Summer Fun” while she is under the impression they are in a serious relationship, and then we have Scooby (Frank Welker) becoming jealous of Shaggy’s crush on Velma. There is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong with this kind of teen romance showing up in a Scooby-Doo adventure but the way it’s handled is about as clichéd as one can get, which makes one wish you were watching Caddyshack instead. Things only get interesting again when the gang figures out that the crazy gas station owner is a descendant of the witch and head to her house for the big confrontation, only for the big “unmasking” to reveal that Velma had been the witch all along.
“Holy twist endings, Batman!”
Turns out that a blue gemstone Velma picked up while beachcombing was one of the lost moonstones belonging to Wanda Grubwort, this allowed the witch to possess poor Velma resulting in such weird behaviour as her destroying clues, being afraid of fire and suddenly sporting warts. Basically, Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster isn't so much a Scooby-Doo mystery as it was a straight-up horror movie - well, a horror-comedy movie - but there's no big reveal that someone was behind the witch’s monstrous shenanigans other than the actual witch.
There was a curse. There was a real witch. The monsters were real.
Stray Observations:• This movie is a rarity in the Scooby-Doo lexicon where we see the Scooby gang having jobs and making actual money.
• When the Lake Monster attacks jeopardizes the country club Daphne exclaims, “We can’t afford to lose these jobs?” Was there a deleted scene where Daphne’s rich family disinherited her? I can understand her family wanting her to develop a good work ethic but losing a summer job would certainly not have the same impact on her that it would on the rest of the gang.
• Shaggy and Velma having a relationship also occurred in the animated series Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.
• Velma being unmasked as the “villain” had already been done in the animated movie Scooby-Doo in Where’s My Mummy?
• It should be noted that Curse of the Lake Monster has a couple of actual decent musical numbers.
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